BARBARA'S TCHATZKAHS

by Nora Ephron 1. In order to foil a terrorist plot, you must first find a terrorist plot. This is not easy. 2. Not just anyone can find and then foil a terrorist plot. You must have an incentive. The best incentive is to be an accused felon, looking at a long prison term. Under such circumstances, your lawyer will explain to you, you may be able to reduce your sentence by acting as an informant in a criminal case, preferably one involving terrorists. 3. The fact that you do not know any actual terrorists should not in any way deter you. Necessity is the mother of invention: if you can find the right raw material -- a sad, sick, lonely, drunk, deranged, disgruntled or just plain anti-American Muslim somewhere in the United States -- you can make your very own terrorist. 4. Now the good part begins. Money! The FBI will give you lots of money to take your very own terrorist out to lots of dinners where you, wearing a wire, can record yourself making recommendations to him about possible ...

Sean O'Neill, Crime & Security Editor The eight young men sitting in the dock presented a picture of respectability. They were dressed in suits and ties, or smart sweaters, and each had combed his hair carefully or trimmed his beard neatly. But these young Britons, aged from 23 to 29, had allegedly planned and volunteered to take part in a terrorist suicide mission that would have rivalled the barbarity of September 11. The “plot” had been finessed in the East London suburb of Walthamstow and the town of High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, but its impact would have been global. The intention, it was alleged at Woolwich Crown Court yesterday, was to detonate liquid explosive bombs on seven transatlantic airliners that would have all been in mid-flight. Around 2,000 passengers and crew could have died. The selected flights would all have left Heathrow over a period of 215 minutes en route for Chicago, San Francisco, New York, Washington, Montreal and Toronto. The prosecution said that...